To force
DIR
to display your directories in alphabetical order, with the
subdirectories listed first, add the line

SET DIRCMD=/O:GN

to
CONFIG.SYS;
and, if you wish the same for your DOS command line
sessions, add the same line to
AUTOEXEC.BAT. You may also wish
to run
DOSKEY
to enable the command history feature. (Shutdown and reboot for changes
to
CONFIG.SYS
to take effect.)

Hold down SHIFT while resizing text windows to make size changes
permanent.

If you want to configure your printer port(s) for shared access
(so that DOS programs
like LapLink,
for example, can use them directly), go
to your printer object, click on it with mouse button two, select
Open -> Settings, select the Output tab, then double click
on the port you wish to share. Check the appropriate box.

While running a DOS graphics program in a window, use the graphics cut
and paste feature to clip a picture and paste it into the Icon
Editor. You can then quickly and easily create custom icons for your
applications.

To disable the automatic application restart feature, add the line

SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY

to your
CONFIG.SYS. To
manually disable automatic application restart when
booting OS/2, hold down the left CTRL, left SHIFT, and F1 keys
simultaneously from the time the mouse pointer appears until icons are
displayed on the desktop.

If you wish to dispense with the Workplace Shell (and its overhead),
particularly on low memory systems, change the line
SET RUNWORKPLACE...
in
CONFIG.SYS
to read
SET RUNWORKPLACE=C:\OS2\CMD.EXE
(replacing
C,
if necessary, with a different drive letter). In fact any program
with job control (e.g. Enhanced Editor, HyperAccess/5) can be used
as the shell. [Character mode alternatives to
the Workplace Shell are now available from (3.2)
Shareware and Freeware
Sources.]

To implement a small scroll back buffer for your OS/2 Warp command line
windows, use the command
MODE CO80,102. This
procedure may be automated by adding
/K MODE CO80,102
in the Optional Parameters section of the OS/2 Window program
object settings.

If you do not want any command line parameters passed to a program
object that you start (for example, if you customize the desktop menu
so that it has an additional option which starts a command line
prompt) place a lone
%
in the Optional Parameters section of the program object
settings. If you do wish to pass parameters, but you want
the extraneous information that the Workplace Shell passes to the
object to be ignored, try putting
&& REM %
in the Optional Parameters section after the parameters
you wish passed.

If you want to move an icon a small distance, "grab" it from the edge
nearest the direction you want to move the icon.

A clever way to manipulate files that are locked when the Workplace Shell is running
(e.g. display drivers) is to add the line
CALL=CMD.EXE
at the end of
CONFIG.SYS. Then
Shutdown and reboot. The system will restart with an
OS/2 Warp command line prompt. Type
EXIT
to proceed into the Workplace Shell. Using
CALL
is also a convenient way to configure OS/2 Warp's serial ports using the
MODE
command. For example:

CALL=C:\OS2\MODE.COM COM2:38400,N,8,1,OCTS=OFF,RTS=ON,BUFFER=ON

configures COM2 for high speed RTS handshaking and buffered
I/O. [Moreover,
the MODE command can be used to determine whether your system has
a buffered UART (National Semiconductor 16550A or
equivalent), nearly essential for high speed
communications. Use the command:

MODE COMx

(where
x
is the communications port number) from an OS/2 Warp command
line. If you see anything
but "BUFFER = N/A" then you have a buffered UART
for that port.]

Another way, which works well with display drivers, is to copy the new
DLL(s) to its(their) own directory (say,
C:\NEW),
then place that directory name first in
LIBPATH
in
CONFIG.SYS. Shutdown
and reboot. OS/2 Warp will use that(those) DLL(s)
before it attempts to use the one(s) located in
\OS2\DLL. To switch back to
the old driver, edit
CONFIG.SYS
and remove
C:\NEW
from
LIBPATH,
then Shutdown and reboot.

To shutdown without a mouse, press CTRL-ESC, select the Desktop, then
press the spacebar (to deselect any icons, if necessary), SHIFT-F10, and
select Shutdown.

Selective Install/Uninstall should be used with caution when changing mouse,
multimedia, or display drivers. Verify that proper changes have been made to
CONFIG.SYS.

If your settings notebooks do not display but are
listed in the Window List, click on the name of the settings
notebook in the Window List (brought up with CTRL-ESC) with
mouse button two and select Cascade.

If your
\OS2\*.INI
files have grown large, use the CopyINI or WPSBackup
utilities to shrink them. Both are available from (3.2)
Shareware and Freeware Sources.

To restart the Workplace Shell (without saving desktop settings, perhaps
after an accidental Sort), use a utility such as psPM [available from
(3.2) Shareware and Freeware Sources]
to terminate
PMSHELL.

To get rid of a WPS object that cannot be deleted, try one of the
following:

Use the WPSTools or Black Hole, available from (3.2)
Shareware and Freeware Sources. (The
WPSTools can also recreate desktop objects that have been lost.)

To load a device driver into high memory in a particular DOS
session change the DOS_DEVICE setting for the session and add
SIZE=0 before the path and filename for the device driver. For
example, the following DOS_DEVICE entry:

SIZE=0 C:\OS2\MDOS\ANSI.SYS

loads the ANSI.SYS device driver into high memory in that
particular session.

To reboot the machine from the command line, use:

SETBOOT /IBD:C

Change the last letter (C) if you want to boot from another
drive. Disk buffers will
be flushed, but Workplace Shell settings will not be
saved.

The settings notebooks now support drag and drop operations
for assigning icons and for changing menus.

To change the icon
for an object, first open the settings notebook (click on the object
with the secondary mouse button, then select Open ->
Settings). Click on the General tab. Then drag any other object
to the icon located on the General page of the settings
notebook. The object's icon will change to match. If you want
to restore it to its former state, click on the Undo button.

To assign actions to menus, open the settings notebook, then
click on the Menu tab. Click on any of the items in the
Available menus section (or Create another). To add an
Action, drag the desired program object to the Actions on
menu section.

To quickly maximize a window, double click on its title bar. To
restore the window to its former size, double click on the title
bar again.

If you have
UNDELETE
enabled, but you want to delete an occasional file without
the overhead incurred by having
UNDELETE
capability, use the
/F
parameter with the
DEL
command. Using this parameter (in either a DOS
or OS/2 Window) will bypass the routine which
moves the file(s) to the directory specified by the
DELDIR
environment variable. The file(s) is(are) deleted faster,
but you will not be able to undelete it(them). The
/N
parameter will prevent prompting ("Are you sure?").

OS/2 Warp includes the ability to set a power on
password. However, if you have forgotten your password,
and you cannot unlock your desktop when you turn your
machine on, try the following. Start OS/2 Warp from a diskette
boot [see (4.4) Starting OS/2 Warp
from Diskette] to get a command line prompt. At
the prompt, enter the following commands:

If you are using a 1024x768 display
driver (such as 8514/A), but
you do not want the icons scaled up in size from 32x32 to 40x40,
patch the display driver file (e.g.
\OS2\DLL\8514_32.DLL)
using DEBUG or a similar utility. Search for the hexadecimal byte
sequence 28 00 28 00 20 00 20 00 and replace the two 28 values
with 20. Reboot for the change to take effect, and be sure
to keep a backup copy of the original file.

To hide your entire desktop, single click on any icon on
the desktop, press CTRL-ESC, then press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. To
return the desktop to normal, press CTRL-ESC then double click
on Desktop.

If you would like to have a Presentation Manager
application start up minimized, first set up a program object
for it by dragging a Program template from the Templates
folder. Then, on the first page of the notebook, enter the
full path and filename of the PM program, but deliberately
misspell it. Click on the arrow in the lower right to turn
the page, then check the Start minimized checkbox. Click on
the left arrow to turn the page back, then correct the
misspelling. Fill in any other information, as desired, then
close up the notebook. The program object is now ready to
start your PM application minimized.

To get approximately 730K free in your DOS sessions,
change VIDEO_MODE_RESTRICTION in the session's settings to
CGA (unless your application requires more than CGA graphics
capabilities).

In a full screen, character
mode OS/2 Warp session it is normally impossible to copy text from the
screen to the Clipboard. To get around the problem, try setting your
printer object to hold all print jobs, press the PrintScreen key while
the full screen OS/2 Warp session is active, return to the printer object
and double click on the print job icon for the PrintScreen, then cut
and paste from the editor.